SiTime Corporation

Good afternoon, and welcome to SciTimes' fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. As a reminder, the conference call is being recorded today, Wednesday, February the 1st, 2023. I would now like to turn the call over to Brett Curry of Shelton Group Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to Sidetime's fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. On today's call from Sidetime are Rajesh Vichish, Chief Executive Officer, and Art Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that during the course of the call, the company may make forward-looking statements regarding expected future results, including financial positions, strategy and plans, future operations, the timing market, and other areas of discussion. It is not possible for the company's management to predict all risks, nor can the company assess the impact of all factors on its business or the extent to which any factor or combination of factors may cause actual results differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the forward-looking events discussed during this call may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied. Neither the company nor any person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements for any reason at the date of this call, to conform the statements to actual results or to changes in the company's expectations. For more detailed information on risks associated with the business, we refer you to the risk factors described in the 10-K filed on February 25th, 2022, as well as the company's subsequent filings with the SEC. Also during the course of the call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we consider to be an important measure of company performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are provided in addition to and not as a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The only difference between GAAP and non-GAAP results is stock-based compensation expense and related payroll taxes. Please refer to the company's press release issued today for a detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Sidetime's CEO. Rajesh, please go ahead.

Thank you, Brett. Good afternoon. First, I'd like to welcome new as well as existing investors to Sitem's Q4 2022 earnings call. Sitem is the leader in a dynamic new product category called precision timing. In electronics, timing is ubiquitous and ensures reliable functioning of systems. Sitem created precision timing to service the needs of applications like automated driving, 5G, enterprise, and IoT. We are early in our growth as we transform the $10 billion timing market. SciTime has shipped 3 billion precision timing chips to 20,000 customers in 300 applications. We had a solid fourth quarter. Revenue for the quarter was 60.8 million, and revenue for 22 was 283.6 million. This is a 30% growth over the previous year, even though the second half of 2022 was challenging. Non-GAAP income was 14.4 million for the quarter and 82.9 million for the year, which is 29% of revenue. On the product side, Sidetime introduced four new products since the last earnings call. Previously, we had introduced four key performance metrics, as indicators of future revenue, SAM expansion, design wins, ASPs, and single source business. While we don't expect to do this on an ongoing basis, given the current market conditions, we're giving further insight into our business by using these metrics this time. In 2021, our SAM was 1 billion. In 2022, we grew it to 2 billion. We're on track to get to 4 billion by the end of 2024. With a highly differentiated precision time products, SciTime is creating a market where we continue to expand our advantages. Since the last earnings call, we introduced four new products and are on track to introduce five more in 2023. Customer activity for these nine new products which includes architectural discussions and sampling, continues to be robust. Seven of these nine products are in our focus segments, comms enterprise, automotive, and aerospace defense. Last week, we introduced two new Endura product families that expand our presence in the aerospace defense market in applications such as position, navigation, and timing, P&T, tactical communications, network synchronization, and surveillance. Both products deliver up to 10 times better environmental resilience, which is crucial for these applications that operate in harsh environments. Our funnel and design wins continue to grow at a higher rate than in previous quarters. In Q4 22, our design wins grew 55% over the same period in 21. Additionally, 65% of these design wins were in our focus segments of comms enterprise, automotive and aerospace defense. Higher average selling prices or ASPs are an indication of the value that we provide to customers. Our ASPs continue to grow and are expected to be higher in 23 than in 22. As in the past few years, we're not seeing any meaningful loss of business to competitors even though their availability has increased and lead times have shortened. We attribute this to the highly differentiated nature of our products. The customer trust that SciTime has earned is of tremendous importance to us, and a metric of that is the percentage of business that is single sourced. In 23, we expect to continue to have 80% of our business as single sourced. Looking further out, our funnel is in a similar single source position across geographies and market segments. Now, coming to our guidance for Q123. As we said earlier, the shortages of the past few quarters led customers and their contract manufacturers to purchase more than they needed. SciTime is continuously evaluating the inventory situation at our top 50 customers and their more than 100 contract manufacturers. While most customers' inventory is as we forecasted earlier, a new development is that our historically largest customer recently informed us that they have more inventory at their subcontractors than they previously thought. Despite the rest of the business being as expected, this will lead to lower revenue in Q123 than previously thought. We continue to believe Q1 2023 will be the lowest quarter of the year as we expect Q2 to be higher than Q1 and the growth to resume in the second half. In conclusion, end customer demand continues to be generally healthy. Our design wins and SAM expansion continues to grow. Our connections with customers is close and growing through design wins. Sitem continues to be the leader in precision timing, a category that we created and we are confident about our future success. Art?

Great. Thanks, Rajesh, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll discuss fourth quarter and full year 2022 results, and I'll provide guidance for the first quarter of 2023 and make some comments on the year. I'll focus my discussion on non-GAAP financial results and refer you to today's press release for a detailed description of our GAAP results. as well as a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. Revenue in the fourth quarter was $60.8 million, and revenue for the full year 2022 was a record $283.6 million, up 30% over 2021. Sales into our mobile IoT and consumer segment were $24.7 million, or 41% of total sales. Sales to our largest customer, which is included in this segment, were 15.5 million, or 26% of sales. Excluding sales to our largest customer, sales into this segment were 9.2 million, or 15% of sales. Sales into our industrial, automotive, and aerospace segment were $20.3 million, or 33% of sales. Sales into our communications and enterprise segment were 15.8 million, or 26% of sales. Non-GAAP gross margins were 63.1%, down about two points from Q3 due to the lower revenue. Non-GAAP gross margins for the full year were 65.2%. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the quarter were $28.2 million as we held spending essentially flat with Q3. Expenses were $16.6 million in R&D and $11.6 million in SG&A. Non-GAAP operating margins were 16.8% for the quarter and 26.7% for the year. Interest income for the quarter was $4 million, up substantially from prior quarters due to higher investment yields. Non-GAAP net income was $14.4 million or $0.64 per share. Non-GAAP net income for the year was $82.9 million, or $3.66 per share. Accounts receivable at the end of the quarter were $41.2 million, with DSOs of 61 days compared to 44.9 million and DSOs of 55 days in Q3. Inventory at the end of the quarter was $57.7 million, up from $45.4 million at the end of Q3, as we bought additional wafer safety stock to provide a cushion in the event of any future geopolitical or other supply chain issues. During the quarter, we generated $5 million in cash from operations, invested $8 million in capital purchases, and ended the quarter with $564 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. essentially flat with a prior quarter. I'd now like to provide some financial guidance for the first quarter of 2023. The macro environment remains somewhat challenging, and it is clearly having an impact on industry-wide semiconductor demand. It also appears that many customers, and especially their subcontract manufacturers, over-ordered when supply bottlenecks eased last year. This higher inventory coupled with the current demand environment has led many customers to reduce order rates as they work through excess inventory. And that is what we are experiencing now. Last quarter, we offered comments on Q1 of 2023 and said that revenue would be down sequentially from Q4 for two reasons. First, we expected the usual seasonal slowdown with our largest customer. And second, we expected a lull in comms and enterprise sales as our customers in those markets work through excess inventory. Our view on Q1 remains consistent with the comments we made last quarter, with one exception, and that has to do with our largest customer. As Rajesh mentioned, it now appears that their subcontract manufacturers have enough inventory to support their needs through the first half of the year. This means that sales to our largest customer will likely be nominal in both Q1 and Q2. To be clear, we have not lost any sockets with this customer. Therefore, once they work through this inventory, sales should rebound to more normal levels starting in Q3. As a result, we now expect Q1 revenue will be somewhere between $37 and $39 million. Gross margins will be down a few points due to the lower sales and will be approximately 60%, plus or minus a point. We will hold operating expenses relatively flat with Q4, so approximately $28 million. Interest income will increase to somewhere between $5 and $5.5 million. Diluted share count will be approximately 23 million shares. So at the midpoint of that guidance, we therefore believe Q1 non-GAAP net income will be approximately breakeven. We also believe that Q1 will be the low quarter for the year, that revenue will increase in Q2, and that once excess inventory gets worked down, sales should rebound nicely in the second half of the year. I'd like to conclude my remarks by saying that even though we are going through this short-term dip, we firmly believe that our long-term growth story is intact. Our process and product developments continue as planned. We expect to introduce at least five more new product families this year, with each spawning numerous derivative products. This will expand our SAM from about $1 billion a year ago to about $4 billion by the end of 2024. Design win and quote activity has been strong, and that coupled with new product introductions and an expanding SAM should lead to continued long-term growth. And on that note, I'd like to hand the call back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. Then wait to hear your name announced. To withdraw your question, Please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Quinn Volton with Needleman Company. Your line is open.

Hey, Art and Regis. I guess I wanted to start with just the environment. Obviously, it sounds like inventory correction is going to have keep results fairly depressed in the first half of the year. But wondering if you might comment today, where do you think the natural level of demand or what do you think consumption of your products is running at on a quarterly basis so that as we start to snap back to that consumption, we have some sense what the revenue ramp might look like in the second half of the year?

Yeah, that's a great question, Quim. You know, it's difficult to quantify that precisely. Clearly, the demand is substantially higher than the guide that we gave for Q1. As both Rajesh and I talked about, there is a lot of excess inventory in the channel. As I mentioned in my discussion, I think, you know, you go back to 2021 and there were a lot of shortages in the industry. And when those shortages eased, a lot of folks, a lot of our customers, and certainly their subcontract manufacturers, took advantage of the supply and over-ordered. So they ended up with too much inventory. That has to get worked down. So I'm not going to put a number on it, but clearly that is suppressing our revenue, I would say substantially, certainly in Q1, and it will also do that in Q2. I think if you just look at our historic numbers, I mean, for the year, we did $283 million in 2022. And there's some overbuying in that, I think, clearly in the first half of the year. But if you notch that down, that's going to be a normalized number for 2022. And I think longer term, our 30% growth rate is intact once we get through this dip. So people, I think, can kind of triangulate what the back half should look like and definitely what 2024 should look like, given that kind of growth rate. So I know I didn't give you any numbers there. But, you know, try to add some color to what we said earlier.

So maybe you're just trying to frame it. It sounds like the 284 in 2022 obviously included some amount of inventory burn. It sounds like it could be ballpark 20 to 40 million. And so it sounds like a run rate might be closer to 40 to 60. Is that sound about right?

I would not dispute that number. I don't want to get tied down to an exact number, but I think the logic there is sound.

Great. And then this is sort of a quick follow-up. Just as margins historically have trended or followed revenue, I assume that since you think revenue is troughing in the first quarter, that the 60% guide for Q1, would you expect that also to be the trough for the year and that as revenue grows sequentially through the rest of the year, that gross margin would trend higher?

Yes, absolutely. And we've talked about this before. Even though we're fabulous, we do have a certain amount of what I call fixed manufacturing overhead. It's the cost of our ops group and some depreciation on some of the back-end equipment that we own that's located at our OSATs. And that's about 10 points of margin. So when the revenue is lower, the absorption rate is lower. And that's what drove lower gross margins from Q2, it was 65 and change, down to, I'm sorry, in Q3. down to 63% in the quarter that we just announced, and my guide down to 60% in Q1. So the direct answer to your question is yes, gross margins will increase as revenue increases. I would expect that we can exit the year with gross margins close to our historic margins. Again, we had gross margins just over, non-GAAP gross margins, just over 65% for the full year that we just ended. And I think we should be able to get back to that level exiting this year, 2023.

Perfect. Thank you for the additional color.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Caso with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Yes, good afternoon. So for the first question, I just I guess based on what you provided in guidance, if you can give some color on the additional segments. I mean, it seems like the guidance seems to imply sort of flattish revenue for both industrial auto aero kind of enterprise and then seasonal decline in the consumer part that's outside of your main customer. Is that a reasonable expectation and any kind of color you could provide around that?

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analysis. Again, comms and enterprise will be substantially lower from Q4 to Q1 for the reasons that I mentioned, and that is our largest customers, that's plural, in that segment have enough inventory to get them through the first quarter. So their order rates are relatively low for Q1. So the biggest decline would be in comms and enterprises. In our auto and industrial segment, in total, that's going to be flattish, I think, from Q4 to Q1. And then our IoT consumer space, excluding our largest customer, will be flattish. But our largest customer, of course, will be down very substantially. Revenue to them, as I mentioned, was $15.5 million in Q4. and it will be quite nominal. Nominal means less than a million dollars in Q1.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you.

As a follow-up, if you could speak about pricing for the remainder of your products, and Rajesh, you made it clear that a large number, the vast majority of products are sole sourced, and knowing that the those customers are buying the product for the performance. But as you see some of the more conventional quartz products decline in pricing, is there a risk that the gap between, you know, side times pricings and the more conventional pricings widen to the point that you do see some pressure? What are your customers telling you and kind of what are you seeing in the market right now?

Right. The way I see it is that there are some products of CyTimes that have no comparable product. I would say that's significant in comms, in enterprise, in a significant part of auto, and clearly in the military aerospace business. That's also true in some of our other products, but let's just focus on this one. On this, we see no competition. We see no quest for lower pricing. because our customers clearly understand how unique our products are in providing value. On the products that are pin-for-pin compatible, higher volume, typically in industrial, perhaps in consumer, maybe in some lower end of networking telecommunications, even there, recall, Chris, that we still sell at a premium price. That means that even in those markets, we sell in the higher end of that customer's product, which also means that we don't see any pricing pressure. And to the extent we do, we have been able to adjust for it in a particular way that it doesn't impact us and continues to lead to growth in our blended pricing, including our largest customer, for the last several quarters. So I'm very confident that SciTime is in a good position, primarily because of our highly differentiated products, whether they are in the focus markets or in our not focus markets.

Thank you. Yep.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Alexandra Becky with Wimbley. Your line is open. Hi, thanks for taking my question.

Just some additional color on your largest customer. Should we be thinking about to take that much revenue out for the next two quarters? It really looks like they've been building inventory over the last year plus. should we be thinking about like normalized rates for that customer more in the kind of 2019, 2020 timeframe? Or do you think they can get back to 2021 levels at some point in the future?

Yeah, I think they can get back to 2021 levels. Clearly they overbought or more precisely their subcontractors overbought. But, you know, we haven't lost any sockets there. And They're a great customer of ours. We work very closely with them. So, yeah, I think we can get back to those types of numbers.

I think, Alex, there's been some decline in their natural demand. It's probably in the news as well. But in general, it is they have a very complex, more than anybody else, they have a whole host of CMs. And I think that between the CMs and them, it took a while for them to figure it out, but they did. And we look forward to any changed forecasting methods from them. And we have had some discussions on that.

Perfect. That's helpful. I was just trying to think about a more normalized level. And then similarly, not to harp on the consumer segment in general, but we've had conversations talking about the non-Apple consumer portion being allowed to sort of bleed out over time as customers maybe go back to court. But in the fourth quarter, it looks like revenue sort of increased sequentially and And I believe you said it would be flattish in Q1. Can you add some color on what you're seeing from customers in terms of their appetite to go back to Quartz versus stay with you and how we should think about that over the next year or two?

Yeah, in general, as I said earlier, we see that whenever customers have differentiated products, they tend to use CyTime. And so we have found very little, if any, almost de minimis loss of business as a consequence of the increased availability of quartz crystal. So we think that X, our largest customer as well, that our business with consumer continues quite solidly. And in fact, we continue to get some nice design wins that will help us in the second half of the year, I believe.

And Alex, I'll just add another comment to that. We have talked about that segment declining over time, but not going to zero. There are still, as Rajesh mentioned, customers in the consumer space where we provide real value. So we're not expecting those numbers to go to zero. And as I mentioned in my script, it was $9.2 million in the fourth quarter. That was up, what, a million, maybe a million and a half from Q3. So, I mean, that's, I think, a reasonable run rate for us there. And over time, if we have the right customers, that could even go up.

Great. That's very helpful.

Thank you. Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Suji DeSilver with Ross. Your line is open.

Hi, Rajesh. Hi, Art. Appreciate, Art, the gross margin guidance toward the end of the year and the confidence there. I wanted to understand if that – I imagine it implies steady pricing is an assumption, or if there's improved blended pricing in that assumption. to going back to mid-60s from end market or product mix up flips?

Well, I mean, one of our basic themes and one of the ways that we got our gross margins to expand from the high 40s three years ago when we went public to 65% for the full year that we just finished is that most of our new products are focused on the market segments that Rajesh mentioned, which are generally higher performance markets. We get higher ASPs and higher gross margins. So over time, as those new products become a larger percentage of our sales, that will continue to help expand our gross margins. And I think we'll see some of that, you know, certainly in the back half of this year and, you know, going out for a number of years.

That's right. And the confidence, I think some of the metrics that we gave Suji are all related. Our ASPs solidity and growth is related to our single source, it's related to our new products, and it's related to our SAM expansion. They're all four tied together, which is why it's all part of one strategy, deliver highly differentiated products that customers just got to have. And I think, of course, we see the benefit of that in the relatively short term in the coming quarters, but the real benefit for that is going to come in growth and stickiness uh in 2024 and 2025 and and so on so i think as those products we talked about nine products as they unfold uh in the marketplace as we get the as we get the design wins um you know i think it'll be really good okay great and then my follow-up question is um those new products as they're coming in and and winning i presume they're they're more focused on the non

consumer markets, auto infrastructure data center. What's the design cycle there and those programs to ramp? And is there sort of an elbow point when these new products were announced, some of them late in 22, that we start to see them come in through design wind ramps?

Yeah. So it's, you know, the typical thing would be to say that in the comms enterprise automotive aerospace defense, a rule of thumb would be about 18 months to ramp to revenue. That being said, uh, we actually see sometimes enough of a desire for our products that they get rushed to markets quicker than we ever thought. Also, don't forget that while seven out of nine of these products are in fact meant for these focus segments, the remaining two are in fact for consumer, IoT, and mobile. And those balance it out by a shorter design window let's say less than a year and shorter time to revenue less than a year. And so, you know, to get to its full glory, I think it takes maybe three years for a product in the focus areas. But again, a reminder that none of our products have ever been obsoleted from the time we introduced them 12 years ago, 13 years ago. So they still continue to sell. So that's an important way of understanding the value.

Very helpful, Rajesh. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, and again, these new products, this looks forward, but we also introduced a lot of products last year and in 2021 and going back to 2020. So even though some of these design cycles can be one, two, or three years, we have a number of products that are in the middle of those design cycles. Okay, great. Sounds good. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star 1-1 to ask the question. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tori Vansberg with Stifel. Your line is open.

Yes. Thank you, Rajesh. Thank you, Art. I had a question about your largest customer, especially as far as them moving manufacturing around. I mean, I think this is sort of in the public domain, too. And I'm just wondering if some of this inventory build and subsequent reduction has anything to the diversification of the manufacturing base, or do you think this is just more purely the front of manufacturers building tumor supply when supply was short?

Yeah, it's a tricky question to ask, and there's some things we don't want to talk about. too much, but I think they do have more CMs than anybody else. That's point one. The second point is that we understand that in tough times, all CMs, many CMs over-order for a variety of reasons, some good ones, some not so good ones. In the case of our largest, historically largest customer, We have spent a lot of time in the past years looking at forecasts directly from them and comparing it to forecasts from the CMs. You can almost say that in some ways we were somewhat instrumental in helping all parties understand what the real situation was. So Saitam has been a value-add player in all of this.

Yeah, that's great perspective, Rajesh. And as my follow-up, your inventories, so again, given that the sales to your largest customer is going to be basically nominal next two quarters, can you just give us some confidence in that $58 million in inventory? You mentioned most of it should be in wafer or in raw materials. So again, just You know, wondering how we should think about that $58 million given the big drop in the first half of the year.

Yeah. So first of all, we consciously increased our inventory, as you mentioned, $57.7 million at the end of last quarter. And the increase is all in wafer stock. So as we've talked about many times, we get our MEMS wafers from Bosch. It's our process, but their factory. And we get our CMOS wafers from TSMC. And we bought wafers from both Bosch and TSMC. And we did it to provide a buffer stock. If there's any type of geopolitical issues out there, if there's any type of supply chain issues out there, we have wafer stock that can support a number of quarters worth of sales. And remember, wafers do not go bad. They do not go obsolete. These can sit on the shelf for years and years and years if needed. They're not going to sit on the shelf for that long. We will start to work it down over the next couple of quarters. So you would expect it to come down during the course of the year to a certain extent. But wafers do not go bad. And that gives us a lot of comfort. And quite honestly, this gives our customers a lot of comfort for the reasons that I just mentioned. If there are any type of supply chain issues out there, with so many of our customers being single sourced with us, they cannot afford for us to not be able to ship something to them.

Right. Yeah, I wanted to underline some more on what Art said. I'm very comfortable with our inventory, and we have done this somewhat deliberately for two or three reasons. One reason is, as we pointed out, none of our products have been obsoleted in the history of the company, and wafers, quote-unquote, don't go bad. That's one. The second is 80% of our business is single source, and as we head into the comms, enterprise, automotive, and aerospace defense markets, it's important for us to reassure our customers that they are in safe pair of hands. The third is less defensive and more opportunistic or offensive. Nobody knows whether the back half of this year is a big curve. We definitely expect it to be more than first half, but there's a case to be made for it to be made for that to be a big snapback, to be a real snapback in demand in the second half. I'm not saying that it will be. I'm just speculating that if it is, I think it gives SciTime a great position to be able to capitalize on that with our programmability, with our value proposition, and we think that it makes sense for that reason as well. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Thanks, Dory.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Doug O'Loughlin with Fabricated Knowledge. Your line is open.

Hey, Art. Hey, Rajesh. I was just wondering, for the full 2023, will you be shipping below the run rate demand? I mean, we just don't know what the second half looks like, and I was wondering if there's a possibility that the entirety of the year you'll be moving down to inventory.

And then I have a follow-up.

Yeah, so we will clearly be shipping below end demand, right, because our customers have to work through some of their inventory. So whatever we end up shipping, the end demand will have been higher. So I don't know if that's your question or if it has to do with our inventory. Okay.

Okay, so I was more just trying to get the trajectory of the second half, right? Like, there really is no way to know right now. But, like, for example, at some point in Q3, Q4, if your largest customer goes from essentially zero to some amount, it's just – I'm just trying to get a better shape. I'm essentially trying to ask what Q3 and Q4 could look like on the other side, but I understand that that's pretty hard to forecast, so –

Yes, but let me provide some comment on that. Yes, we believe that sales to our largest customer will come back strongly in the back half for two reasons. One, in the first half, they're going to have to consume inventory. That situation disappears in the back half. And the second piece of this is that our strongest business with this customer has always traditionally been in the second half of the year. If you go back and look at preceding years, That is, you know, we ship a lot more to them in the back half of the year than the first half of the year. So I firmly believe that our sales to that customer will come back relatively strongly in the back half of the year.

Okay, perfect. And then on the design wind side, you talked about 300 applications in the prepared remarks. Is there some kind of, do you guys track the application expansion? And is there a way to see how much that's expanded over, say, 21 or 20 or 2020?

We don't track it as a primary metric. It's one of the secondary metrics. What we track are design wins in particular segments rather than in particular applications. But I think it's safe to say that from the time that we went public, we have about doubled the number of applications. So in other words, we've probably gone from sub-150 to 300 applications. and we continue to add applications every month, really.

Okay, and going forward with these design wins, do you think you'll be able to double that again? Like I'm just trying to get a kind of magnitude of the number of design wins, like from the longer tail, or is it going to be like a similar group of current applications that are just being sold into more and more, if that makes any sense?

Right. Like, you know, our funnel is very strong, right? Our funnel continues to grow very, very solidly year on year. Every year that we've been here, it's been growing a lot. And that's no surprise given that we've been adding new products and we've been marketing stronger and so on. So as long as our funnel growth continues, particularly around single source, particularly around our focus markets, particularly around our higher differentiated products, I think that the design wins will follow quite naturally. But we think that they will grow, but I couldn't say whether they double, and I couldn't give you that level of precision.

So Doug, another way to think about it is we talk about our SAM a lot, and we calculate that SAM by looking at the different applications and how our products will apply to those different applications. Our SAM was a billion dollars a year ago. Just recently, as Rajesh mentioned on the call, we think it's about $2 billion now, and by the end of 2024, we think it goes to $4 billion. And a lot of that SAM expansion comes from new products that are essentially going into new applications.

Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. I'm sure no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Yeah, I'd like to just say that I feel very comfortable. Obviously, the decline in our largest customers' revenue is not to our liking, but we understand the situation very well because, as I said, we helped get some clarification in it, so we have good insight into that. We are also, on the second half of the year, as mentioned by Art, quite confident in the growth of their business. X that business, the rest of our business continues to do well. We continue to believe that Q1 is in fact the bottom and that we start to get back in Q2 and Q3, Q4, it starts to ramp up. What the level of that ramp is, we're watching carefully. We obviously have strong views on that, but we're just watching for now and we let you know as it unfolds. Clearly though, What makes me feel very good about the place where we are is that in all of this, our ASPs continue to grow, our single source position continues to be at 80%, our funnel continues to grow, our products are right on time, and given that even in spite of the complexity, we are able to bring them out and connect with our customers. So all in all, I think we're in great shape, and we'd love to give you more information as we go further in the quarter. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. The conference will begin shortly. To raise and lower your hand during Q&A, you can dial star 1 1. you Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, and welcome to SciTimes' fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. As a reminder, the conference call is being recorded today, Wednesday, February the 1st, 2023. I would now like to turn the call over to Brett Curry of Shelton Group Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to Sidetime's fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. On today's call from Sidetime are Rajesh Vichish, Chief Executive Officer, and Art Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that during the course of the call, the company may make forward-looking statements regarding expected future results, including financial positions, strategy and plans, future operations, the timing market, and other areas of discussion. It is not possible for the company's management to predict all risks, nor can the company assess the impact of all factors on its business or the extent to which any factor or combination of factors may cause actual results differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the forward-looking events discussed during this call may not occur, and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied. Neither the company nor any person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements for any reason at the date of this call, to conform the statements to actual results or to changes in the company's expectations. For more detailed information on risks associated with the business, we refer you to the risk factors described in the 10-K filed on February 25th, 2022, as well as the company's subsequent filings with the SEC. Also during the course of the call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we consider to be an important measure of company performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are provided in addition to and not as a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The only difference between GAAP and non-GAAP results is stock-based compensation expense and related payroll taxes. Please refer to the company's press release issued today for a detailed reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Sidetime's CEO. Rajesh, please go ahead.

Thank you, Brett. Good afternoon. First, I'd like to welcome new as well as existing investors to Sitem's Q4 2022 earnings call. Sitem is the leader in a dynamic new product category called precision timing. In electronics, timing is ubiquitous and ensures reliable functioning of systems. Sitem created precision timing to service the needs of applications like automated driving, 5G, enterprise, and IoT. We are early in our growth as we transform the $10 billion timing market. SciTime has shipped 3 billion precision timing chips to 20,000 customers in 300 applications. We had a solid fourth quarter. Revenue for the quarter was 60.8 million, and revenue for 22 was 283.6 million. This is a 30% growth over the previous year, even though the second half of 2022 was challenging. Non-GAAP income was 14.4 million for the quarter and 82.9 million for the year, which is 29% of revenue. On the product side, Sidetime introduced four new products since the last earnings call. Previously, we had introduced four key performance metrics, as indicators of future revenue, SAM expansion, design wins, ASPs, and single source business. While we don't expect to do this on an ongoing basis, given the current market conditions, we're giving further insight into our business by using these metrics this time. In 2021, our SAM was 1 billion. In 2022, we grew it to 2 billion. We're on track to get to 4 billion by the end of 2024. With a highly differentiated precision time products, SciTime is creating a market where we continue to expand our advantages. Since our last earnings call, we introduced four new products and are on track to introduce five more in 2023. Customer activity for these nine new products which includes architectural discussions and sampling, continues to be robust. Seven of these nine products are in our focus segments, comms enterprise, automotive, and aerospace defense. Last week, we introduced two new Endura product families that expand our presence in the aerospace defense market in applications such as position, navigation, and timing, P&T, tactical communications, network synchronization, and surveillance. Both products deliver up to 10 times better environmental resilience, which is crucial for these applications that operate in harsh environments. Our funnel and design winds continue to grow at higher rates than in previous quarters. In Q4 22, our design winds grew 55% over the same period in 21. Additionally, 65% of these design wins were in our focus segments of comms enterprise, automotive, and aerospace defense. Higher average selling prices, or ASPs, are an indication of the value that we provide to customers. Our ASPs continue to grow and are expected to be higher in 23 than in 22. As in the past few years, we're not seeing any meaningful loss of business to competitors even though their availability has increased and lead times have shortened. We attribute this to the highly differentiated nature of our products. The customer trust that SciTime has earned is of tremendous importance to us, and a metric of that is the percentage of business that is single sourced. In 23, we expect to continue to have 80% of our business as single sourced. Looking further out, our funnel is in a similar single-source position across geographies and market segments. Now, coming to our guidance for Q123. As we said earlier, the shortages of the past few quarters led customers and their contract manufacturers to purchase more than they needed. SciTime is continuously evaluating the inventory situation at our top 50 customers and their more than 100 contract manufacturers. While most customers' inventory is as we forecasted earlier, a new development is that our historically largest customer recently informed us that they have more inventory at their subcontractors than they previously thought. Despite the rest of the business being as expected, this will lead to lower revenue in Q123 than previously thought. We continue to believe Q1 2023 will be the lowest quarter of the year as we expect Q2 to be higher than Q1 and the growth to resume in the second half. In conclusion, end customer demand continues to be generally healthy. Our design wins and SAM expansion continues to grow. Our connections with customers is close and growing through design wins. Sitem continues to be the leader in precision timing, a category that we created and we are confident about our future success. Art?

Great. Thanks, Rajesh, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll discuss fourth quarter and full year 2022 results, and I'll provide guidance for the first quarter of 2023 and make some comments on the year. I'll focus my discussion on non-GAAP financial results and refer you to today's press release for a detailed description of our GAAP results. as well as a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. Revenue in the fourth quarter was $60.8 million, and revenue for the full year 2022 was a record $283.6 million, up 30% over 2021. Sales into our mobile IoT and consumer segment were $24.7 million, or 41% of total sales. Sales to our largest customer, which is included in this segment, were 15.5 million, or 26% of sales. Excluding sales to our largest customer, sales into this segment were 9.2 million, or 15% of sales. Sales into our industrial, automotive, and aerospace segment were $20.3 million, or 33% of sales. Sales into our communications and enterprise segment were 15.8 million, or 26% of sales. Non-GAAP gross margins were 63.1%, down about two points from Q3 due to the lower revenue. Non-GAAP gross margins for the full year were 65.2%. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the quarter were $28.2 million as we held spending essentially flat with Q3. Expenses were $16.6 million in R&D and $11.6 million in SG&A. Non-GAAP operating margins were 16.8% for the quarter and 26.7% for the year. Interest income for the quarter was $4 million, up substantially from prior quarters due to higher investment yields. Non-GAAP net income was $14.4 million or $0.64 per share. Non-GAAP net income for the year was $82.9 million, or $3.66 per share. Accounts receivable at the end of the quarter were $41.2 million, with DSOs of 61 days compared to 44.9 million and DSOs of 55 days in Q3. Inventory at the end of the quarter was $57.7 million, up from $45.4 million at the end of Q3, as we bought additional wafer safety stock to provide a cushion in the event of any future geopolitical or other supply chain issues. During the quarter, we generated $5 million in cash from operations, invested $8 million in capital purchases, and ended the quarter with $564 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. essentially flat with a prior quarter. I'd now like to provide some financial guidance for the first quarter of 2023. The macro environment remains somewhat challenging, and it is clearly having an impact on industry-wide semiconductor demand. It also appears that many customers, and especially their subcontract manufacturers, over-ordered when supply bottlenecks eased last year. This higher inventory coupled with the current demand environment has led many customers to reduce order rates as they work through excess inventory. And that is what we are experiencing now. Last quarter, we offered comments on Q1 of 2023 and said that revenue would be down sequentially from Q4 for two reasons. First, we expected the usual seasonal slowdown with our largest customer. And second, we expected a lull in comms and enterprise sales as our customers in those markets work through excess inventory. Our view on Q1 remains consistent with the comments we made last quarter, with one exception, and that has to do with our largest customer. As Rajesh mentioned, it now appears that their subcontract manufacturers have enough inventory to support their needs through the first half of the year. This means that sales to our largest customer will likely be nominal in both Q1 and Q2. To be clear, we have not lost any sockets with this customer. Therefore, once they work through this inventory, sales should rebound to more normal levels starting in Q3. As a result, we now expect Q1 revenue will be somewhere between $37 and $39 million. Gross margins will be down a few points due to the lower sales and will be approximately 60%, plus or minus a point. We will hold operating expenses relatively flat with Q4, so approximately $28 million. Interest income will increase to somewhere between $5 and $5.5 million. Diluted share count will be approximately 23 million shares. So at the midpoint of that guidance, we therefore believe Q1 non-GAAP net income will be approximately breakeven. We also believe that Q1 will be the low quarter for the year, that revenue will increase in Q2, and that once excess inventory gets worked down, sales should rebound nicely in the second half of the year. I'd like to conclude my remarks by saying that even though we are going through this short-term dip, we firmly believe that our long-term growth story is intact. Our process and product developments continue as planned. We expect to introduce at least five more new product families this year, with each spawning numerous derivative products. This will expand our SAM from about $1 billion a year ago to about $4 billion by the end of 2024. Design win and quote activity has been strong, and that coupled with new product introductions and an expanding SAM should lead to continued long-term growth. And on that note, I'd like to hand the call back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. Then wait to hear your name announced. To withdraw your question, Please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Quinn Volton with Needleman Company. Your line is open.

Hey, Art and Regis. I guess I wanted to start with just the environment. Obviously, it sounds like inventory correction is going to have keep results fairly depressed in the first half of the year. But wondering if you might comment today, where do you think the natural level of demand or what do you think consumption of your products is running at on a quarterly basis so that as we start to snap back to that consumption, we have some sense of what the revenue ramp might look like in the second half of the year?

Yeah, that's a great question, Quim. You know, it's difficult to quantify that precisely. Clearly, the demand is substantially higher than the guide that we gave for Q1. As both Rajesh and I talked about, there is a lot of excess inventory in the channel. As I mentioned in my discussion, I think, you know, you go back to 2021 and there were a lot of shortages in the industry. And when those shortages eased, a lot of folks, a lot of our customers and certainly their subcontract manufacturers took advantage of the supply and over-ordered. So they ended up with too much inventory. That has to get worked down. So I'm not going to put a number on it, but clearly that is suppressing our revenue, I would say substantially, certainly in Q1, and it will also do that in Q2. I think if you just look at our historic numbers, I mean, for the year, we did $283 million in 2022. And there's some overbuying in that, I think, clearly in the first half of the year. But if you notch that down, that's going to be a normalized number for 2022. And I think longer term, our 30% growth rate is intact once we get through this dip. So people, I think, can kind of triangulate what the back half should look like and definitely what 2024 should look like, given that kind of growth rate. So I know I didn't give you any numbers there. But, you know, try to add some color to what we said earlier.

So maybe you're just trying to frame it. It sounds like the 284 in 2022 obviously included some amount of inventory burn. It sounds like it could be ballpark 20 to 40 million. So it sounds like a run rate might be closer to 40 to 60. Is that sound about right?

I would not dispute that number. I don't want to get tied down to an exact number, but I think the logic there is sound.

Great. And then this is sort of a quick follow-up. Just as margins historically have trended or followed revenue, I assume that since you think revenue is troughing in the first quarter, that the 60% guide for Q1, would you expect that also to be the trough for the year and that as revenue grows sequentially through the rest of the year, that gross margin would trend higher?

Yes, absolutely. And we've talked about this before. Even though we're fabulous, we do have a certain amount of what I call fixed manufacturing overhead. It's the cost of our ops group and some depreciation on some of the back-end equipment that we own that's located at our OSATs. And that's about 10 points of margin. So when the revenue is lower, the absorption rate is lower. And that's what drove lower gross margins from Q2, it was 65 and change, down to, I'm sorry, in Q3. down to 63% in the quarter that we just announced, and my guide down to 60% in Q1. So the direct answer to your question is yes, gross margins will increase as revenue increases. I would expect that we can exit the year with gross margins close to our historic margins. Again, we had gross margins just over, non-GAAP gross margins, just over 65% for the full year that we just ended. And I think we should be able to get back to that level exiting this year, 2023.

Perfect. Thank you for the additional color.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Caso with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Yes, good afternoon. So for the first question, I just I guess based on what you provided in guidance, if you can give some color on the additional segments. I mean, it seems like the guidance seems to imply sort of flattish revenue for both industrial auto aero kind of enterprise and then seasonal decline in the consumer part that's outside of your main customer. Is that a reasonable expectation? Any kind of color you could provide around that?

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analysis. Again, comms and enterprise will be substantially lower from Q4 to Q1 for the reasons that I mentioned, and that is our largest customers, that's plural in that segment, have enough inventory to get them through the first quarter. So their order rates are relatively low for Q1. So the biggest decline would be in comms and enterprises. In our auto and industrial segment, in total, that's going to be flattish, I think, from Q4 to Q1. And then our IoT consumer space, excluding our largest customer, will be flattish. But our largest customer, of course, will be down very substantially. Revenue to them, as I mentioned, was $15.5 million in Q4. and it will be quite nominal. Nominal means less than a million dollars in Q1.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you.

As a follow-up, if you could speak about pricing for the remainder of your products, and Rajesh, you made it clear that a large number, the vast majority of products are sole-sourced, and knowing that the those customers are buying the product for the performance. But as you see some of the more conventional quartz products decline in pricing, is there a risk that the gap between, you know, side times pricings and the more conventional pricings widen to the point that you do see some pressure? What are your customers telling you and kind of what are you seeing in the market right now?

Right. The way I see it is that there are some products of SciTimes that have no comparable product. I would say that's significant in comms, in enterprise, in a significant part of auto, and clearly in the military aerospace business. That's also true in some of our other products, but let's just focus on this one. On this, we see no competition. We see no quest for lower pricing. because our customers clearly understand how unique our products are in providing value. On the products that are pin-for-pin compatible, higher volume, typically in industrial, perhaps in consumer, maybe in some lower end of networking telecommunications, even there, recall, Chris, that we still sell at a premium price That means that even in those markets, we sell in the higher end of that customer's product, which also means that we don't see any pricing pressure. And to the extent we do, we have been able to adjust for it in a particular way that it doesn't impact us and continues to lead to growth in our blended pricing, including our largest customer, for the last several quarters. So I'm very confident that SciTime is in a good position, primarily because of our highly differentiated products, whether they are in our focus markets or in our not focus markets. Got it. Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Alexandra Becky with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just some additional color on your largest customer. Should we be thinking about to take that much revenue out for the next two quarters? It really looks like they've been building inventory over the last year plus. should we be thinking about like normalized rates for that customer more in the kind of 2019, 2020 timeframe? Or do you think they can get back to 2021 levels at some point in the future?

Yeah, I think they can get back to 2021 levels. Clearly they overbought or more precisely their subcontractors overbought. But, you know, we haven't lost any sockets there. And They're a great customer of ours. We work very closely with them. So, yeah, I think we can get back to those types of numbers.

I think, Alex, there's been some decline in their natural demand. It's probably in the news as well. But in general, it is they have a very complex, more than anybody else, they have a whole host of CMs. And I think that between the CMs and them, it took a while for them to figure it out, but they did. And we look forward to any changed forecasting methods from them. And we have had some discussions on that.

Perfect. That's helpful. I was just trying to think about a more normalized level. And then similarly, not to harp on the consumer segment in general, but we've had conversations talking about the non-Apple consumer portion being allowed to sort of bleed out over time as customers maybe go back to court. But in the fourth quarter, it looks like revenue sort of increased sequentially and and I believe you said it would be flattish in Q1. Can you add some color on what you're seeing from customers in terms of their appetite to go back to Quartz versus stay with you and how we should think about that over the next year or two?

Yeah, in general, as I said earlier, we see that wherever they have, when our customers have differentiated products, they tend to use CyTime. And so we have found very little, if any, almost de minimis loss of business as a consequence of the increased availability of quartz crystal. So we think that X, our largest customer as well, that our business with consumer continues quite solidly And in fact, we continue to get some nice design wins that will help us in the second half of the year, I believe.

And Alex, I'll just add another comment to that. We have talked about that segment declining over time, but not going to zero. There are still, as Rajesh mentioned, customers in the consumer space where we provide real value. So we're not expecting those numbers to go to zero. And as I mentioned in my script, it was $9.2 million in the fourth quarter. That was up, what, a million, maybe a million and a half from Q3. So, I mean, that's, I think, a reasonable run rate for us there. And over time, if we have the right customers, that could even go up.

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Suji DeSilver with Roth. Your line is open.

Hi, Rajesh. Hi, Art. Appreciate, Art, the gross margin guidance toward the end of the year and the confidence there. I wanted to understand if that – I imagine it implies steady pricing is an assumption, or if there's improved blended pricing in that assumption. to going back to mid-60s from end market or product mix up flips?

Well, I mean, one of our basic themes and one of the ways that we got our gross margins to expand from the high 40s three years ago when we went public to 65% for the full year that we just finished is that most of our new products are focused on the market segments that Rajesh mentioned, which are generally higher performance markets. We get higher ASPs and higher gross margins. So over time, as those new products become a larger percentage of our sales, that will continue to help expand our gross margins. And I think we'll see some of that, you know, certainly in the back half of this year and, you know, going out for a number of years.

That's right. And the confidence, I think some of the metrics that we gave Suji are all related. Our ASPs solidity and growth is related to our single source, it's related to our new products, and it's related to our SAM expansion. They're all four tied together, which is why it's all part of one strategy, deliver highly differentiated products that customers just got to have. And I think, of course, we see the benefit of that in the relatively short term in the coming quarters, but the real benefit for that is going to come in growth and stickiness in 2024 and 2025 and so on. So I think as those products, we talked about nine products as they unfold in the marketplace, as we get the design wins, you know, I think it'll be really good.

Okay, great. And then my follow-up question is those new products as they're coming in and winning, I presume they're more focused on the non- consumer markets auto infrastructure data center what's the design cycle there and those programs to ramp and is there sort of an elbow point when these new products were announced some of them late in 22 that we start to see them come in through design win ramps yeah so it's you know the typical thing would be to say that in the comms enterprise automotive aerospace defense a rule of thumb would be about 18 months to ramp to revenue that being said

we actually see sometimes enough of a desire for our products that they get rushed to markets quicker than we ever thought. Also, don't forget that while seven out of nine of these products are in fact meant for these focus segments, the remaining two are in fact for consumer, IoT, and mobile. And those balance it out by a shorter design length let's say less than a year and shorter time to revenue less than a year. And so, you know, to get to its full glory, I think it takes maybe three years for a product in the focus areas. But again, a reminder that none of our products have ever been obsoleted from the time we introduced them 12 years ago, 13 years ago. So they still continue to sell. So that's an important way of understanding the value.

Very helpful, Rajesh. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, and again, these new products, this looks forward, but we also introduced a lot of products last year and in 2021 and going back to 2020. So even though some of these design cycles can be one, two, or three years, we have a number of products that are in the middle of those design cycles. Okay, great. Sounds good. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star 11 to ask the question. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tori Vansberg with CIFL. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you, Rajesh. Thank you. I had a question about your largest customer. especially as far as them moving manufacturing around. I mean, I think this is sort of in the public domain, too. And I'm just wondering if some of this inventory build and subsequent reduction has anything to the diversification of the manufacturing base, or do you think this is just more purely the front of manufacturers building tumor supply when supply was short?

Yeah, it's a tricky question to ask, and there's some things we don't want to talk about. too much, but I think they do have more CMs than anybody else. That's point one. The second point is that we understand that in tough times, all CMs, many CMs over order for a variety of reasons, some good ones, some not so good ones. In the case of our largest, historically largest customer, We have spent a lot of time in the past years looking at forecasts directly from them and comparing it to forecasts from the CMs. You can almost say that in some ways we were somewhat instrumental in helping all parties understand what the real situation was. So Saitam has been a value-add player in all of this.

Yeah, that's great perspective, Rajesh. And as my follow-up, your inventories, so again, given that the sales to your largest customer is going to be basically nominal next two quarters, can you just give us some confidence in that $58 million in inventory? You mentioned most of it should be in wafer or in raw materials. So again, just wondering how we should think about that $58 million given the big drop in the first half of the year.

Yeah. So first of all, we consciously increased our inventory, as you mentioned, $57.7 million at the end of last quarter. And the increase is all in wafer stock. So as we've talked about many times, we get our MEMS wafers from Bosch. It's our process, but they're factory. And we get our CMOS wafers from TSMC. And we bought wafers from both Bosch and TSMC. And we did it to provide a buffer stock. If there's any type of geopolitical issues out there, if there's any type of supply chain issues out there, we have wafer stock that can support a number of quarters worth of sales. And remember, wafers do not go bad. They do not go obsolete. These can sit on the shelf for years and years and years if needed. They're not going to sit on the shelf for that long. We will start to work it down over the next couple of quarters. So you would expect it to come down during the course of the year to a certain extent. But wafers do not go bad. And that gives us a lot of comfort. And quite honestly, this gives our customers a lot of comfort for the reasons that I just mentioned. If there are any type of supply chain issues out there, with so many of our customers being single sourced with us, they cannot afford for us to not be able to ship something to them.

Right. Yeah, I wanted to underline some more on what Art said. I'm very comfortable with our inventory, and we've done this somewhat deliberately for two or three reasons. One reason is, as we pointed out, none of our products have been obsoleted in the history of the company, and wafers, quote-unquote, don't go bad. That's one. The second is 80% of our business is single source, and as we head into the comms, enterprise, automotive, and aerospace defense markets, it's important for us to reassure our customers that they are in safe pair of hands. The third is less defensive and more opportunistic or offensive. Nobody knows whether the back half of this year is a big curve, right? We definitely expect it to be more than first half, but there's a case to be made for it to be made for that to be a big snapback, to be a real snapback in demand in the second half. I'm not saying that it will be. I'm just speculating that if it is, I think it gives SciTime a great position to be able to capitalize on that with our programmability, with our value proposition, and we think that it makes sense for that reason as well. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Thanks, Dory.

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Doug O'Loughlin with Fabricated Knowledge. Your line is open.

Hey, Art. Hey, Rajesh. I was just wondering, for the full 2023, will you be shipping below the run rate demand? I mean, we just don't know what the second half looks like, and I was wondering if there's a possibility that the entirety of the year you'll be moving down to inventory.

And then I have a follow-up.

Yeah, so we will clearly be shipping below end demand, right, because our customers have to work through some of their inventory. So whatever we end up shipping, the end demand will have been higher. So I don't know if that's your question or if it has to do with our inventory.

Okay, so I was more just trying to get the trajectory of the second half, right? Like, there really is no way to know right now, but like, for example, at some point in Q3, Q4, if your largest customer goes from essentially zero to some amount, it's just, I'm just trying to get a better shape. I'm essentially trying to ask what Q3 and Q4 could look like on the other side, but I understand that that's pretty hard to forecast, so...

Yes, but let me provide some comment on that. Yes, we believe that sales to our largest customer will come back strongly in the back half for two reasons. One, in the first half, they're going to have to consume inventory. That situation disappears in the back half. And the second piece of this is that our strongest business with this customer has always traditionally been in the second half of the year. If you go back and look at preceding years, That is, you know, we ship a lot more to them in the back half of the year than the first half of the year. So I firmly believe that our sales to that customer will come back relatively strongly in the back half of the year.

Okay, perfect. And then on the design wind side, you talked about 300 applications in the prepared remarks. Is there some kind of, do you guys track the application expansion? And is there a way to see how much that's expanded over, say, 21 or 20 or 2020?

We don't track it as a primary metric. It's one of the secondary metrics. What we track are design wins in particular segments rather than in particular applications. But I think it's safe to say that from the time that we went public, we have about doubled the number of applications. So in other words, we've probably gone from sub-150 to 300 applications. and we continue to add applications every month, really.

Okay, and going forward with these design wins, do you think you'll be able to double that again? Like I'm just trying to get a kind of magnitude of the number of design wins, like from the longer tail, or is it going to be like a similar group of current applications that are just being sold into more and more, if that makes any sense?

Right. Like, you know, our funnel is very strong, right? Our funnel continues to grow very, very solidly year on year. Every year that we've been here, it's been growing a lot. And that's no surprise given that we've been adding new products and we've been marketing stronger and so on. So as long as our funnel growth continues, particularly around single source, particularly around our focus markets, particularly around our higher differentiated products, I think that the design wins will follow quite naturally. But we think that they will grow, but I couldn't say whether they double, and I couldn't give you that level of precision.

So, Doug, another way to think about it is we talk about our SAM a lot, and we calculate that SAM by looking at the different applications and how our products will apply to those different applications. You know, our SAM was... a billion dollars a year ago. Just recently, as Rajesh mentioned on the call, we think it's about 2 billion now, and by the end of 2024, we think it goes to 4 billion. And a lot of that SAM expansion comes from new products that are essentially going into new applications.

Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. I'm sure no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Yeah, I'd like to just say that I feel very comfortable. Obviously, the decline in our largest customers' revenue is not to our liking, but we understand the situation very well because, as I said, we helped get some clarification in it, so we have good insight into that. We are also, on the second half of the year, as mentioned by Art, quite confident in the growth of their business. X that business, the rest of our business continues to do well. We continue to believe that Q1 is in fact the bottom and that we start to get back in Q2 and Q3, Q4, it starts to ramp up. What the level of that ramp is, we're watching carefully. We obviously have strong views on that, but we're just watching for now and we let you know as it unfolds. Clearly though, What makes me feel very good about the place where we are is that in all of this, our ASPs continue to grow, our single source position continues to be at 80%, our funnel continues to grow, our products are right on time, and given that even in spite of the complexity, we are able to bring them out and connect with our customers. So all in all, I think we're in great shape, and we'd love to give you more information as we go further in the quarter. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.